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LXer Weekly Roundup for 26-Dec-2010

Welcome to the last Roundup for 2010 and please accept my apologies for being a day late getting this to you. It seems the holiday festivities have caused me to lose track of time.. Enjoy!

"What's this 'DEEE-bee-en' you write about?" Or will Linux ever (ever?) make its move on the desktop?: The entries in this blog flow through my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and once in awhile a friend of mine who has nothing to do with the open-source software world wonders what the hell I'm talking about. Just this weekend, somebody asked me, "What's this 'DEEE-bee-en' you write about?" Would the question be any different with the word "Ubuntu" in there? I don't think so. When it comes to desktop Linux (not to mention BSD, which is even further in the geek ghetto), nobody knows what we're talking about.

Pinguy OS - Probably the Best Ubuntu Derivative I have Ever Used!: Pinguy OS - not many must have heard about it. Pinguy OS is basically a heavily modified Ubuntu with an emphasis on the out-of-the-box functionality of the OS and more importantly on the look-good factor. And I got to tell you folks, on every count, my experience with Pinguy OS was well above average.

Introducing K16 and the Future of KDE: Where will KDE be in five years? To answer this question, we plan to bring together visionaries, strategists, planners, out-of-the-box-thinkers, realists, dreamers, doers, creators, leaders, coders from the KDE community and everybody else who is interested in discussing the future of KDE and picturing what it will be.

Ten Linux Distros that use the Enlightenment Desktop: Even though the Enlightenment desktop is fantastic there are currently not very many distributions that utilize it. Today I would like to take the time to mention those that offer a version with my favorite desktop.

Linux Out, FreeBSD In: Don’t let the title scare you. This is only on my main file server, which holds both shared material (source tarballs and update packages) and 116G of movie files. It has recently begun to mis-behave under Linux. The specific symptom is a network freeze under heavy I/O load. This is not unknown with the Realtek 8139 Ethernet chipset, but it’s a big hassle when a movie player stops hard because NFS has suddenly disappeared.

Mandriva Linux 2010.2 Released: A month ago we reported that two versions of Mandriva were coming soon after a number of its developers had left the project to form the Mageia Linux distribution after Mandriva's parent company was facing some financial hardship and its future was questionable during this period. The two versions of Mandriva being worked on were Mandriva 2010.02 and Mandriva 2011, with the former having been released today...

How to Draw Arrows in Gimp: Photoshop users who have switched to GIMP will notice that some of the PS features are not readily available in Gimp. Drawing arrows is one of them. As a tech blogger who have to edit plenty of screenshots everyday, there are times where I need to draw arrows on the images to illustrate the point. While this can be easily done in Photoshop, the feature is not available in the default installation of GIMP. Here is what you can do to enable the arrow feature in GIMP.

22 ways to convert your friend to Linux: Are your friends convinced that they should be paying for their operating systems because Linux sounds too complicated or because they think it won't do what they want it to? Fear not, here's your guide to bringing your friends over to the light side...

So. What Now?: I took a few days off from writing any articles, partly to try to make a serious dent in transcribing the Comes v. Microsoft exhibits. We're in the home stretch, and a quiet weekend, marking on a curve, is perfect. I know there's lots going on, other than work. I also needed to take some time to think about the recent discovery about Novell taking money from Microsoft and contractually agreeing to show up at Open XML standards meetings and events. Should Groklaw stop helping people like that, I asked? Is it time to shut Groklaw down? If not, is there a way to carve out helping Linux and FOSS, which is what we are about, from helping self-interested executives and board members so that in essence we end up being used by them so they get larger piles of money because we worked ourselves to the bone and then they repay the community with such a deal as this?

The evolution of the Linux desktop: Back in 1998 when I started using Linux, it was ugly. In those days you installed it by inserting around 40 floppy disks into your computer and praying that one of them wouldn't be a duffer and make you have to start again. After this lengthy installation process, you were typically presented with this not-entirely-intuitive interface:

Dear PJ: Please Don't Quit Groklaw: Novell throws FOSS under the bus to make a deal with Microsoft. Pamela Jones wonders why bother with Groklaw, if helping companies like Novell only leads to getting the shaft yet again?